This Week's Day-by-Day Picks

Who's funny now? The Second City comedy
superstars of tomorrow perform Saturday at the
Boulder Theater.

Thursday, February 5

It'll be all bicyclists, all the time, at tonight's Evening With Davis Phinney and Friends at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street in Boulder. The freewheeling event, a benefit for the Lance Armstrong Foundation, begins with an auction preview at 6:30 p.m. before rolling on into the night. Phinney -- like Armstrong, a solid Tour de France competitor -- will be joined by a saddlebag-full of his cycling cohorts and filmmaker Scott Coady for a screening of The Tour Baby! (an inside look at the 2000 Tour); an after-party with L.A. DJ Ron Miller follows at 9 p.m. Auction items range from great gear to one-of-a-kind cycling memorabilia; for tickets, $10, call 303-786-7030 or log on to www.bouldertheater.com.

Friday, February 6

Composer Stephen Scott, a professor of music at Colorado College, has spent a good part of his life tinkering around inside a grand piano. A champion of the bowed piano -- in which the strings are actually bowed like those of a violin -- Scott employs ten musicians in his Bowed Piano Ensemble, each of whom bows, plucks or otherwise manipulates strings with a variety of imaginative tools to create a kind of gestalt chamber orchestra, performing together on the same instrument. The group performs Scott's Paisajes Audibles/Sounding Landscapes, a work influenced by world music, tonight at 7:30 p.m. at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral, 1350 Washington Street. Tickets range from $12 to $14; call 303-832-4676.

Saturday, February 7

Year in and year out, local musical couples Mollie O'Brien and Rich Moore and Pete and Joan Wernick (and, in the past, Nick and Helen Forster) would join together on stage for a Valentine's Day concert about the joys of hooking up with someone with whom you have something in common. It's an idea that's sticking around. In spite of a venue change this year, Songs for Lovers springs eternal: The show goes on tonight at 8 p.m. at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street; admission is $12. For details, call 303-294-9281 or 303-294-9258 or log on to www.mercurycafe.com.

Question: How many famous funny folks got their starts in Second City? Oh, don't even start. That list could practically fill this entire newspaper, and when you finished reading through it, your jaw would be on the floor. An institution that has spread from Chicago to Canada and beyond since the 1950s, Second City germinated generation after generation of historic comedy ensembles -- or at least the hearts and souls of them -- including numerous Saturday Night Live crews. That's what gives any appearance by the Second City National Touring Company its sheen: You simply never know who you're going to catch before they make it big. This year's model performs tonight at 7 and 10:30 p.m. at the Boulder Theater, 2032 14th Street, Boulder; for tickets, $16.50 to $21.50, call 303-786-7030 or log on to www.bouldertheater.com.

Los Angeles performance poet Jerry Quickley, who went to Iraq last year as a Pacifica Radio war correspondent, will bring new meaning to tonight's installment of Guerrilla Wordfare, a Boulder event that's grown from a small poetry reading with live music to a high-energy, rapid-fire battery of readings and raps interspersed with a musical gumbo. (Organizers say more than thirty performers signed up for the last one.) Quickley, local rapper Apostle and others perform tonight at the Trilogy Lounge, 2017 13th Street, Boulder; for details, call 303-473-9463.

Sunday, February 8

Winter's no reason to hang up your hiking boots; with a pair of cross-country skis or snowshoes, you can still go for miles. So take a hike: At the Frisco Gold Rush Cross Country Classic, one of the oldest events of its kind in the state, you can go as far as your feet will take you. Along with a 5K classic, there are 10K and 20K freestyle skate and 5K snowshoe events, all starting between 9 and 11:30 a.m. at the Frisco Nordic Center, Highway 9 in Frisco. Fees range from $18 to $20 and benefit the Summit Ski Club. For information, call 1-970-668-0866; to register, go to www.active.com.

Monday, February 9

Education, health care, affirmative action, domestic violence, poverty, the workplace -- these are just a few of the issues facing women in Colorado, who must count on the state legislature to come through with the right decisions on such matters. But how often do you stop and think about it, gals, in between getting your kids to and from school, picking up a prescription, fighting the guy in the next cube for a promotion, calling the cops on the couple arguing next door, earning a buck and so on? The annual Legislative Breakfast on Women's Issues, sponsored jointly by some fifty Colorado women's organizations and taking place from 7 to 9:30 a.m. today at the Colorado History Museum's Boettcher Auditorium (1300 Broadway), gives you a chance to reflect on how state politics affect your day-to-day life. Keynote speaker Linda Bowman of Aurora Community College will talk on "Budget Cuts: A Textbook Case," and legislators will be on hand to discuss issues. Tickets are $14 in advance/$20 at the door; call 720-913-8465 or log on to www.denvergov.org/women to download a registration form.

Tuesday, February 10

In 1957, when Arkansas governor Orval Faubus defied a Supreme Court decision and called the National Guard in to block nine black students from entering the all-white Central High in Little Rock, Carlotta Walls LaNier was there. She was one of those nine kids, as well as one of only three who eventually graduated from the school. Grown up now, she lives in Englewood, and she has memories to last a lifetime. LaNier will share her experience as a pioneer of desegregation today with "Memoirs of the Little Rock Nine," a public talk hosted by the Auraria campus in conjunction with Black History Month. The free speech begins at 11:30 a.m. at St. Cajetan's Center, 1190 9th Street; for a live-stream broadcast, log on to http://studentactivities.mscd.edu.

Wednesday, February 11

Mardi Gras mambo: No better times will roll tonight than at the Soiled Dove, 1949 Market Street, where Dikki Du and the Zydeco Crew, featuring Troy Carrier, a dynastic musical heir who follows in the footsteps of his famous dad, Roy, and brother, Chubby, as a keeper of the zydeco flame, will host a Mardi Gras party to rival none. Carrier, who paid his dues playing washboard for the Carrier clan and C.J. Chenier before learning to play the accordion and setting out on his own as a bandleader, performs at 8 p.m.; for tickets, $10, call 303-299-0100.

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